"The central doctrine of Christianity, then, is not that God is a bastard. It is, in the words of the late Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, that if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you."--Terry Eagleton

"It is impossible for me to say in my book one word about all that music has meant in my life. How then can I hope to be understood?--Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice."--Bryan Stevenson

Tuesday, May 02, 2017

History Repeats Itself

Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director, told reporters Tuesday afternoon that the reason Trump floated the possibility of a shutdown was all because of Democrats’ happiness at the spending deal. Over and over, he went after Democrats for hurting the president’s feelings. Some highlights:

“The Dems have been trying to claim victory on this, which I think is a very strange way to look at a bipartisan discussion. If you’re in a bipartisan meeting, I think it is very unusual for one group to walk out and start spiking the football and say, ‘We won, we killed the other guys.’ It certainly doesn’t bode very well for future discussions.”

“I think the president is frustrated with the fact that he negotiated in good faith with the Democrats and they went out to try and spike the football to make him look bad. I get that frustration because I think it’s a terrible posture for the Democrats to take.”

“I think what you heard this morning was his sense of frustration over how he’s being mistreated by the Democrats on a bipartisan piece of legislation.”

“You have a president who is able to work with Democrats and Republicans. Again, a little disappointed with the way Democrats acted after the deal was put together.”

“What I think you heard the president express this morning was frustration over how he’s been treated as part of the negotiation. And it may be if things don’t get better, we may get to that point [of a shutdown].”

Here was Newt Gingrich, leader of the Republican Revolution and defender of civilization on this planet, forced to sit for 25 hours in the back of Air Force One, waiting for President Clinton to stop by and negotiate a budget deal. But Clinton never came back. So Gingrich, in his rage, drafted two resolutions that forced Clinton to bring the federal government to a grinding halt.

And we remember how that worked out for him. In the 1998 midterms, despite the Lewinsky scandal, Republicans lost 9 seats in Congress and Gingrich lost his Speakership.

1 Comments:

I can't remember who it was who pointed out that Trump's ways of getting his own way didn't work in government, he couldn't, when he couldn't get what he wanted just go on to the next deal because the country is the deal.

We are ruled by a juvenile punk and his gang of Grover Dills. Donawd and the Dills, band name.